Internet blackouts, the war on journalism, propaganda, influence operations, bans on demonstrations and online censorship are all happening for the same reason: to keep the public from forming a truth-based understanding of what's happening in Gaza.
By Caitlin JOHNSTONE
Great efforts are being made to hide what's happening in Gaza from the outside world, both by Israel and its western allies.
Israel's minister of communications announced on Friday that all internet services in Gaza would be cut off on Saturday; CNN reports that internet services there have already been plummeting for the last week. Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah recently 𝕏 said on Twitter that he hasn't been able to reach any of his contacts in Gaza for hours.
Even before the internet was cut off it had already been getting harder and harder for people in Gaza to get information to the outside world after Israel cut the enclave off from electricity as part of its " complete siege" on the civilian population. The outlet Middle East Eye reports that it lost contact with two of its journalists in Gaza on Friday. One of them, a reporter named Maha Hussaini, 𝕏 posted a video before losing contact in which she said "This might be my last video, as my phone battery is dying while we're facing an almost complete blackout."
As usual, Israel has also been targeting members of the press. A Reuters journalist was killed and six others from Reuters, AFP and Al Jazeera were injured by IDF artillery fire in southern Lebanon on Friday. Outlets like The New York Times and 𝕏 even Reuters have refrained from acknowledging the perpetrator of the attack, but Al Jazeera attributes the casualties to "shelling by Israeli forces," citing witness testimony. BBC journalists were also held at gunpoint and physically assaulted by Israeli soldiers in Tel Aviv, and it's probably worth mentioning that these reporters were specifically from BBC Arabic and had Arabic names.
The aim is clear: to commit genocide in a total media blackout.
Efforts to blind the world to Israel's crimes are of course not limited to Israel. The EU has begun 𝕏 exerting pressure on Twitter to begin censoring content on the Israel-Palestine issue in accordance with new Digital Services Act regulations in order to avoid receiving penalties. The day after receiving a 24-hour deadline to address "illegal content and disinformation," hundreds of "accounts linked to Hamas" were reportedly removed from the platform. We're meant to simply take it on faith that these accounts were indeed linked to Hamas and not simply deemed guilty of wrongthink.
Efforts to spread awareness of Israel's crimes via public demonstrations have also been getting the blindfold treatment in the west. France has issued a blanket ban on all pro-Palestinian protests. Germany has been banning specific pro-Palestine protests and groups and has issued a total ban on all demonstrations deemed supportive of Hamas, and the Berlin public prosecutor's office 𝕏 has criminalized the use of the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free."
In a new report for Mintpress News titled " Propaganda Blitz: How Mainstream Media is Pushing Fake Palestine Stories," Alan MacLeod documents how the western media have been further obfuscating pubic perception into what's happening in Gaza by pushing brazen atrocity propaganda and deceitfully framing the issue in a way that's wildly biased in favor of Israel's information interests.
So you can see that in every possible way, the world's vision into what's happening in Gaza is being obstructed, manipulated, and outright hidden. This is happening for the same reason witnesses to Mafia crimes tend to go missing: it's easier to get away with murder when there's nobody who saw you do it.
This is after all happening as Israel prepares to ramp up its aggressions even further, and as Israeli president Isaac Herzog asserts that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza because they didn't forcibly overthrow Hamas.
"It is an entire nation out there that is responsible," Herzog told the press on Friday. "It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It's absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d'etat."
The worse Israel makes itself look with its own actions, the more forceful it and the nations who are aligned with it will get at obstructing and manipulating public perception of those actions. The more brazen Israel's criminality becomes, the more shrill and vitriolic its defenders will become, the more iron-fisted government interference in public opposition will get, and the more hidden what's happening in Gaza will become.
Internet blackouts, the war on journalism, propaganda, influence operations, bans on demonstrations and online censorship are all happening for the same reason: to keep the public from forming a truth-based understanding of what's happening in Gaza. Because if the public did form a truth-based understanding of what's happening in Gaza, they wouldn't consent to what's happening there.
The World Is Being Blinded To What's Happening In Gaza - Caitlin Johnstone